Prove it.

When?

"For thousands of years, man has used religion as his sword to get what he desires."



Define time, and I'll see what I can do. :p

Time is an illusion caused by the passage of history.

Where does the past exist? What form does it take? How do we know it ever happened?

Oh and BioLogos, that's what I'm trying to figure out...how do you define time? Also, I hope you didn't take my signature as something anti-Christian/religion. It's not meant that way at all.

Time is a dimension that we are traveling through at the speed of light. In a very real sense the past literally exists just as the present and the future.

The illusion of time that we see is only because we are traveling through it and so, from our perspective, the past is time that we have already been past and the future is that which we haven't reached yet. The present does not exist at all.

(February 12, 2010 at 7:01 pm)Watson Wrote: 1) Where does the past exist? 2) What form does it take? 3) How do we know it ever happened?

Oh and BioLogos, that's what I'm trying to figure out...how do you define time? Also, I hope you didn't take my signature as something anti-Christian/religion. It's not meant that way at all.

1) Does something need a spatial location in order to exist? Counterexample for theists: God.
2) Does something need a "form" in order to exist? (Counterexample for theists: God? Hesitantly)
3) Our memories, historical artefacts, etc. Of course these could be unreliable (*thinks of YECs and fossils...*) but the simplest explanation is that the past happened rather than appears to have happened.

And I have nothing against your quote (indeed, it's quite true). It was just that it mentions time, so it was a sort of proof that you do believe in time/the past really.

(February 12, 2010 at 7:05 pm)Darwinian Wrote: Time is a dimension that we are traveling through at the speed of light. In a very real sense the past literally exists just as the present and the future.

But you have no proof of anything in regards to this 'time dimension', although you can assert certain things about the nature of the universe. Such as: the earth revolves around the sun, producing an endless loop of night and day; we are moving through the universe at the speed of light; the universe itself is moving and so is light; you exist right here and right now.

Quote:The illusion of time that we see is only because we are traveling through it and so, from our perspective, the past is time that we have already been past and the future is that which we haven't reached yet. The present does not exist at all.

How do you know the past exists at all if we are currently and perpetually in our own present?

BioLogos haha, I see now! You're right, I do believe in time. But that's only because I've experienced it before, so I know it exists.

1.) Exactly! Not everything requires a spatial location, especially something as illogical as God or time. Time has no location, no form, no obvious evidences; it only has the experience of it's passage to prove it exists.

2.) Well it could be said that God takes on all forms possible simultaneously, and that in so doing He requires no physical evidences of Himself.

3.) Exactly again! there is no proof of anything outsid eof what is in th ehistory books and in our memories. A good read on the concept is 1984 by George Orwell. Both memories and records/artifacts/fossils are unreliable unless you have faith in them.

"the past is time that we have already been past and the future is that which we haven't reached yet. The present does not exist at all."

Hey,
I would posit a different interpretation. I think that the past is partially real, in the sense that it did happen and it does affect the present. But we cannot access or change the past, just remember it. So in the sense of control the pastis not real, we cannot control it. The future is even less real, all I see looking forwards are possibilities, unless you may be deterministic. There is no such thing as a future, it hasn't happened yet, and at least the past happened once. All we have left is the fleeting moment of the present.

It made me laugh when you said the present does not exist. I remember learning from Eastern Philosophy that the present is the only thing that exists. The present is real, and we can try to control it, the very moment where future possibility becomes past fact. I beleive that that is correct, the the past and more so the future are illusionary and the 'here and now' is the only thing that's real.

"Time is an illusion caused by the passage of history. "
Or is history an illusion caused by the passage of time? Time, I think, is a reality, a fourth dimension. It is half of this existence, along with space (and matter).

You really think the present is an illusion? I appreciate that, but disagree.

Thanks.

The past present and future all exist. It's akin to asking: "if a tree falls in the woods, and no one's around, does it make a sound"? Which is sound eastern philosophy for some while others would just say how couldn't it?
Time is derived from the basic elements of 'objects' and 'motion' [which obviously includes space to "house" it all]. So we end up with such examples as day/night cycle, which I can put large wagers on occuring when I know it will.